Catharsis – Fighting the Depression
Abid Hussain Rather
Catharsis is the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions. It is actually the process of purification and purgation of emotions particularly pity and fear which brings about spiritual renewal or release from tension.
It is an emotional release which is linked to a need to relieve unconscious conflicts. If a person doesn’t give a proper vent to these conflicts, these conflicts may burst out in the form of anger or may remain inside in the form of depression which may ultimately result in some psychological disease and even suicidal cases.
When we are unable to express our feelings and emotions at different occasions we get mentally stressed because these unexpressed feelings get stored in our subconscious mind. Catharsis can take place in different ways in different type of people.
Everybody expresses his feelings and his inner thoughts in his own ways. Some write poetry and some prose to express their feelings. Painting and sculpturing are other ways to express our feelings. Some express their feelings through anger and some prefer silence. We often see some people talking to themselves or sometimes tears come out of our eyes unconsciously. Some people like loneliness and prefer to stay alone.
They hate congestions and noisy places. Sometimes these inner conflicts may result in hating ourselves. These are the different ways of catharsis and it depends upon an individual in which mode he may express his inner feelings and relieve himself from stress and tension. It is an irony that most people don’t know how to express their inner conflicts and get relief from stress.
When a person is able to relieve his inner stress through catharsis he feels like his heavy heart slowly lightens. He feels like his stress is fading away and feels an inner happiness. His hopes get renewed. He starts to love his life and his surroundings again. He enjoys the beauty of nature and lives his life with a living heart.
We need to take care if our mental health because it directly affects our physical health. Catharsis is very essential for mental health. We should learn to live life fully and enjoy the moments of happiness whole heartedly. Whenever we feel some sort of grief or sorrow we should never hide it inside us, rather we should express it and share it with our nears and dears.
Whenever we feel bad or get hurt by the actions or words of somebody, we should complaint to him in a positive way rather than storing those hurt sentiments inside us. Whenever we need any kind of help from somebody we should openly request for help and whenever somebody helps us we should thank him by heart.
If we find some sort of goodness in some person we should openly praise him. Whomever we like to talk we should interact with him. We should prefer the profession we love rather than forcefully involving ourselves in that work in which we are not interested. Positive thinking is necessary to live a stress-free and happy life. We should never indulge ourselves in negative thoughts.
When we burry our positive and negative feelings inside us and keep them carrying inside our subconscious mind, it results in mental stress and uneasiness in life. When we live with unsaid sorrows, complaints, hate, love, littleness, affection, faults, and many other likely things from time immemorial inside our mind, these things become burden on us and snatch our happiness and comfort. We need to give time to ourselves to get clean this burden and come out of depression.
Some ways how catharsis can take place and how we can live a happy life include :
Always express your feelings fully and with an open heart. We can express both our good and bad feelings in a positive way.
We can share our feelings towards others with someone whom we trust and who is worth to listen and understand us.
We can write poetry, prose, novels etc. to express ourselves before people. There are different plate forms where we can express ourselves in this way like Facebook etc.
We can depict our thoughts through painting and sculpturing.
Sometimes we can relieve our stress through some sports activity in which we are interested.
We can enjoy the reading of our choice or we can watch some useful videos. There are many such talk shows, interview programs on TV sets, YouTube which can be beneficial to us.
We can take part in some social work. We can benefit our society by our capabilities and in turn get mentally relaxed.
Prayer is the best way to get out of depression. Mediation is most beneficial to fight the mental stress. When we talk to our creator in our mediation with a clear heart, we get answer to our queries.
Always forgive people before sleeping, it gives mental peace.
If a person feels any kind of difficulty in performing all above mentioned activities, he needs psychological counseling. He should consult a psychiatrist and express his feelings which are there buried inside him from a long time before him to regain his mental health and to live his life up to his capabilities. Our mental stress doesn’t affects only us but it indirectly affects the people who are related to us in our life affairs and in the long run it affects the whole society and a society with mentally depressed people can seldom progress.
(The author is a columnist and teaches Geography at GDC, Kulgam. He can be reached at [email protected])
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